The old internet died and we watched and did nothing • Hacker News Board

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#41

Post by AndrewUnmuted » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

shantly wrote: post #33

ekianjo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we gotta ban collecting & monetizing user info anything that runs across a network can be monitored, and such data is valuable when you are able to merge it across several data sources. It's very unlikely tracking can even be banned or un-monitized.

Making it illegal so no legitimate business can do it without incredible risk of being sued/charged out of existence seems quite feasible.

You really don’t think companies would figure out a way around any such “illegality” or just use it anti competitively as is being done throughout the EU with its ham-handed policies?

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#42

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #40

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be true but it doesn’t justify the monetization of user data. If this data is useful to cross reference, let the user opt in and use it. Give the user control and insight into the data collection. The data can be useful without tricking users and making money off their private use activities.

> This may be true but it doesn’t justify the monetization of user data. I don't understand your point. If it can technically be done and it is valuable in any way, it WILL be done. No matter the justification.

Not if it were illegal.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#43

Post by maxymajzr » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

I remember the sound my 28800 modem made before connecting.

I knew I have exactly 1 second below 60 minutes to be online before I get disconnected from my student dial-up.

I had ICQ. We used Altavista (and Astalavista to crack the software we illegally got). Relevant information and socializing was done via newsgroups, as well as content-sharing. Many don't know why winzip/winrar has the option to split an archive into multiple files (so they can fit 1.44" floppy disk and avoid upload limits). Later on I used Miranda so I can use ICQ/IRC/AIM/MSN from the same client. Browser wars were nonexistent. First "awesome" browser shell I used was Maxthon and content was shared on lan parties or you used obscure xdcc search engines to leech off of IRC. FPS games that I played (quake 1, 2 and 3) lagged, I had 200 ping - which is how I learned about the importance of latency and what it is. It dropped to 50 once I got ISDN.

Now, why did I type this? Not to present myself as "the old internet user". I don't consider myself a user of internet from "before", I'm well aware of even older generation whose internet looked even different. I'm just saddened by the fact that buzzfeed, one of the worst ad-ridden sites that exists, is making this kind of an article, spreading false knowledge (which is what it does anyway). It's not even an article. It's made by someone who used Facebook when it looked slightly shittier than it does now.

That's not "old" internet. The consumer-generation that's lifeblood of leeches such as buzzfeed/youtube has no experience nor right to write about "old" internet. They simply haven't experienced how internet used to be when total population online was well below 50 million people and when broadband was a luxury.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#44

Post by MisterTea » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

As far as I'm concerned the internet is just a global IP network. I can still ssh to my openbsd server and connect to my plan 9 system at home. I can rent a server that is still a PC. I can rent a VPS that feels like a pc.

Until the day comes when I can no longer send whatever IP traffic where and when I want, I'm still using the same old internet. The roads are still the same. The scenery just changed with time. Everything else is just a roadside attraction along the way. And like roads the attractions ebb and flow with time.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#45

Post by hans1729 » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #25

shantly wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want a (return to the) boom in open-source and paid standards-based solutions, we gotta ban collecting & monetizing user info. Monetized user info & related advertising paying for "free" walled services are keeping those down. We won't see widely-successful standards-based social networks or messaging services until that option is gone. [EDIT] and wide success/adoption matters for those in particular because mu…

> we gotta ban collecting & monetizing user info anything that runs across a network can be monitored, and such data is valuable when you are able to merge it across several data sources. It's very unlikely tracking can even be banned or un-monitized.

>It's very unlikely tracking can even be banned [...]

How so? It's just politics - no more, no less. I don't even consider it highly unlikely that it will, letalone can, be banned, at least in the EU.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#46

Post by foobarian » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

rasengan wrote: post #4

The old internet died long before these centralized services appeared. The old internet was when we ran our own servers, built and hosted our own websites, and we were truly free in the wild wild west. Its easier than ever to run your own servers, but today few do. The old internet is dead (for now) and it looks more like the BBS era today. But we innovated past that then, and we will innovate past that now. I am gre…

I feel like the ratios changed a lot which makes it seem like the old Internet died. But there are probably more people running their own servers than there used to be. It's just that that makes up just something like 1% of the user community instead of 100%.

"The old internet" is what you got when only nerds were online. Replicate that and you got your old internet back. Cue the above mentioned decentralization work...

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#47

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

shantly wrote: post #33

ekianjo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we gotta ban collecting & monetizing user info anything that runs across a network can be monitored, and such data is valuable when you are able to merge it across several data sources. It's very unlikely tracking can even be banned or un-monitized.

Making it illegal so no legitimate business can do it without incredible risk of being sued/charged out of existence seems quite feasible.

How do you make illegal monitoring access to services? Because at the core this is what tracking is based on.

Even if you trickled tracking down to IP addresses and time of usage only you could still have a very useful database of users across services.

Oh and by the way, tracking was not invented by Internet companies, all payment systems and credit cards have been doing tracking for ages before that and selling their data to third parties.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#48

Post by samb1729 » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

mashby wrote: post #30

samb1729 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BuzzFeed News is not BuzzFeed. They've won many journalism awards as you can see on their Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed_News I do agree that reusing the name must surely do their image significant harm.

This is often repeated, but...Can you name a large news source that has not won a "journalism awards"?

I'm not attempting to establish credibility for BuzzFeed News beyond the statement of fact I made the my first comment. BuzzFeed itself doesn't win journalism awards, regardless of how you useful a signal you consider those, because their listicle stuff isn't journalism.

I have no interest in debating the nature of BuzzFeed News's journalism beyond making this distinction clear.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#49

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #42

ekianjo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This may be true but it doesn’t justify the monetization of user data. I don't understand your point. If it can technically be done and it is valuable in any way, it WILL be done. No matter the justification.

Not if it were illegal.

How can you make monitoring logs illegal? Because that is pretty much enough to start tracking users.

Re: The old internet died and we watched and did nothing

#50

Post by Chinjut » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

decasteve wrote: post #35

More than a dozen comments on this article and none reference the actual content of the article and miss the point of the article entirely. It's a headline the evokes different ideas but it has nothing to do with the Internet not being what it used to be. The sorry state of platforms is an issue, for sure, but it's not what this article is about. Commenting on headlines is another sorry state of Internet discussion.…

Wow. You're correct. Absolutely incredible that this is the only comment actually responding to the article's content.